Juniors Anna Bartz and Elizabeth "Biz" Egerer have graciously agreed to be regular contributors to this year's VolleyBlog. Here is their first entry, completed on the bus somewhere between Des Moines and Milwaukee.
The journey all the way to West Des Moines turned out to be worth the six long hours on a bus full of PMSing girls. On our way, we stopped at a very fancy Panera Bread smack dab in the middle of a mall with an ice rink in it (now that’s first class!). The Panera was delicious, especially the 500+-calorie practically fun-size mac n’ cheese. When we finally arrived to the world-class Sheraton Inn, a ginormous waterfall greeted us - talk about spoiled. Then we got some news; we would be having a pool workout in 20 minutes! This came as a shock to the Panthers; it wasn’t even listed on the itinerary! But like the hard-working team we are, we pushed through that pool workout with almost no one stepping in the green (we’ll call it fungus) growing in each corner of the pool.
The next morning, all of us were weary at the fact that, because we didn’t bring enough spandex for the pool workout, we had wet bottoms for practice. No one likes wet bottoms and it definitely doesn’t help with the whole chafing situation. We hiked our way to McDonald’s, crossing a treacherous divided highway, but we all seemed to make it out alive.
Later that day we had our first match against the Wyoming “Cowgirls,” or so they refer to themselves as. There was nothing quite like watching them shoot off their guns as they were announced. After a few yellow cards thrown to the same “Cowgirl” twice, we lassoed the ‘W’ in four games.
The next morning came too early, as we awoke before the rooster on the farm next door. We ate a delicious Sheraton breakfast alongside the pee-wee Patriots football team, who decided to take a break from an intense duck-duck-goose game to finally fill their empty bellies. We made our way to the gym, where we played our first match against the IPFW Mastodons (aka extinct elephants aka elephants with horns). They were scrappy, yes, but we persevered through the jungle being the Panthers that we are, and we ate those Mastodons up in four.
We watched the next match to scout the Drake Bulldogs. After that match, we went shopping at a nice mall because that’s what girls do (plus, aside from cow tipping, it seemed like the next best option). We ate at Champps (mmm-mmm good) and then made our way back to the gym to take care of some unfinished business.
We came paws forward and claws out and took those poor Bulldogs down in four. We were tournament champions, and special congratulations to Kerri Schuh for receiving MVP, and Rachel Neuberger and Morgan Potter for being on the All-Tournament Team!
Go Panthers!!!
-Biz and Anna (aka Banna aka Aniz)
